July 3, 2010

Alexandra Ramos was designing a logo for her band, Pam. With a little direction from instructor Kevin Cahill and mentor Blake Panos, she had come up with a design she liked while working in a graphic art class.

It was week one of Imagine College, a summer program based at CSU Monterey Bay that gives high school students from the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District a taste of college life and provides an opportunity for some of them to earn scholarship money to help pay for it. Alexandra, a 10th grader at Seaside High, was already familiar with the campus. "My brother graduated from CSUMB two years ago. That's why I was interested" in the summer program, she said. "I really like art. You can express yourself in so many ways."

She had always drawn by hand, but learned three software programs during her week at Imagine College. "None of the students had used these programs, but they picked it up incredibly quickly," Cahill said. "They're digital natives."

While two dozen students worked away in a computer lab, others were working on film projects. One group assembled behind the library, working on a film about young peoples' goals and aspirations.

Kaitlin Harvey, a sophomore at Seaside High, was the director, a confident young woman who seemed to know what she wanted from the actors and camera operator. Kaitlin acknowledged that she decided to attend the program to "have something to do," but realized that she was developing skills that will be useful in the future.

"It's taught me to be a leader . . . how to communicate with other people," she said.

Instructor Luis Camara gave the team advice on lighting and camera angles. "Kaitlin knows what she wants," Camara said. "And the camera person knows what she's saying. They seem to get the dynamic the way it's supposed to work."

Camara explained that the students were learning to collaborate, and "they pick up the process pretty quickly. Some of them fall in love with it. Others find it tedious.

"Either way, they learn that making films is harder than they thought it was going to be," he said.

Three separate weeklong sessions of the Imagine College Summer Scholar Institute were held in June, each one hosting 60 students from Monterey, Seaside and Marina high schools who chose to study graphic design, filmmaking or web design. CSUMB instructors taught the classes; university students and recent graduates served as teaching assistants and mentors.

The cornerstone of the program is the guarantee of a $4,000 scholarship to any student who attends two Imagine College summer sessions, graduates from Seaside High with a 2.5 grade-point average and gets accepted to a four-year college or university. The first students to earn scholarships will graduate from Seaside High next June.

"It's exciting to anticipate the first scholarship class in 2011," said Carol Lenters of MPUSD, director of the summer program.

A donor and the Monterey Peninsula Foundation provide the funding. CSUMB, MPUSD and UC Santa Cruz Educational Partnership Center sponsor the institute.